GO CITYBREAK:Less flashy and brash than Milan, less self-consciously touristy than Venice, Turin is the real secret of northern Italy, writes SHEILA KILLIAN
THE MARKET is paintbox-bright, and awash with the smell of fresh produce – mounds of red tomatoes, purple aubergines, pyramids of lemons, sweet strawberries piled high on a cart, strange mushrooms that could have come from a Lord of the Ringsprop box, laid out reverently on a bed of straw, and everywhere people talking at the tops of their voices in a mix of languages.
This is Mercato di Porta Palazzo, Turin, claiming to be the biggest outdoor market in Europe, and who knows, perhaps it is. It’s certainly massive, and multicultural, a dazzle of scents and sounds. Half the square is fruit and vegetable stalls. The meat hall is like a scene of carnage with recognisable skinned rabbits, horse, and more domestic beasts hanging or sliced open for sale. The fish hall has everything you ever imagined swimming in the sea heaped up on beds of ice. It’s teeming, loud, fabulous.
In contrast, Turin itself is the essence of low-key elegance. Decked out with Italian flags to mark the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, the covered sidewalks are punctuated with cafes where locals sit and drink good coffee or cool, fruity ice cream, taking a break from their day. There are over 20km of these colonnaded galleries, so that even in bad weather you can stroll the streets in comfort.
And what streets – Turin is a city designed by the finest architects of the 17th and 18th centuries, employed by the Savoys who made this place their home and, as a guide told us, “insisted it must be beautiful”. Subsequent designers carried on the work, layering the arcades along the streets so that now the work of 200 years or more looks continuous. Even today, the artwork carries on as the annual Luci d’Artista competition challenges artists to brighten the winter streets with clever plays of colour and light.
Here at the base of the mountain, at the start of the fertile Po valley, it’s also a great place for food, particularly coffee, chocolate and hazelnuts. My daughter was delighted to discover it was, as she put it, “the home of the Tic Tac”, and put her request in early for sweet souvenirs.
There are cafes on every block, from the simple but stylish Fiorio which has the best ice creams, to the 19th century grandeur of Baratti Milano featuring the local Gianduia chocolate, richly flavoured with hazelnuts from the surrounding hills. As the weather gets cold, the locals forsake ice cream and order a bicerin, to enjoy the warming effect of espresso, chocolate and cream, carefully layered in a small glass.
This region produces lots of rice, so naturally risotto features on the menus, creamy and delicious. The slow food movement was born in this area, and local pastas and veal dishes are everywhere. You can even attend tastings of local chocolate at Lucernotti, on the edge of town.
Of course the city is also famous for the Shroud of Turin, brought here by the Savoys, and now housed in the modest Capella della Sacra Sindone near the Duomo, where it will next be displayed in 2025. An eerie reproduction stands in the dimly-lit side-aisle of the church, sepia-tinted, drawing a steady stream of mostly older pilgrims to light a candle beside it. The shroud is sealed away until 2025 in an ornate gold-encrusted chapel. A guide explained it had been displayed briefly earlier in the year “because of the 150 years celebration. And because we need tourists now”.
It’s an easy city to get around. The centre is compact, and walking is pleasant. There are trams and buses which run reliably and on time, though the buses get crowded and noisy at peak times. Locals are friendly, and more than happy to talk to tourists. Waitresses and shop assistants smiled at our efforts to speak Italian, and were uniformly courteous. The taxi driver was delighted to meet Irish people. “Our economy,” he beamed into the rear-view mirror, “also same like yours.” He struggled for the words: “We are both kaput!” We beamed back in solidarity – what else could we do?
Museo dell’Automobile, the museum of the automobile, is a little outside the city centre on Corsa Unita d’Italia, but it’s well worth a visit, even if cars aren’t your thing. I drive a nine-year-old Skoda, so my eldest son would say the whole experience was wasted on me. But he’d be wrong. It’s less of a museum than a love letter, a homage to the car, and all it has meant to people, mostly men, for the last hundred odd years.
Since the Agnelli family founded Fiat in Turin, the town has celebrated cars. The museum is the culmination of this, massive and grey, cool in all senses. Uniformed guides smilingly point you to the top of the building to start your tour with the steam tricycle, and other early attempts to motorise transport. You wander through mock workshops and assembly lines, surrounded by the sounds of mechanics’ voices, air raid sirens and all the clang and din of history. There are pods where you can sit and view car advertisements through the ages, and trolleys to ride through an assembly line.
All fascinating, but the real stars here are the cars – Model Ts, Maseratis, and shining brightest of all, the concept cars in the basement, gleaming their bright primary colours in the steel grey space. The museum is the essence of cool for anyone who has even sat in a car, though not the cheapest in town at €12.50 per adult.
THE EGYPTIANmuseum is a complete contrast – feeling almost uncurated. There are very few attendants in this big old palazzo in the centre of town which houses the best collection of Egyptian artefacts outside of Cairo. You pay a meagre €7.50 to get in, with under 18s free, and set off upstairs. Nothing prepares you for the sight of real mummies in the high-ceilinged room, tiny and wizened-like dried flowers, with creepily stretched brown skin on their grasping, bony fingers. Italian teenagers look unconcerned, snapping them on their cellphones as though they were plastic.
Downstairs are dozens of giant, up-lit statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, and the entire contents of a tomb or two. It feels strange to step from a stylish Italian street into ancient Egypt, too easy to just walk in and get close to these treasures, so far from their home.
The star of Turin’s museums must be the Mole Antonelliana housing the national museum of the cinema. The Mole dominates Turin’s skyline, an iconic tower originally designed as a synagogue, but converted before completion to a civic monument. It’s the tallest brick-built structure in Italy, and a glass lift will whisk you right to a viewing platform far above the city. This is open late at weekends, and that’s the best time to come as the distant mountains darken and lights in the city glow brighter underneath you, as a warm wind blows up into your face.
The building also houses the museum of the cinema, a scripted experience from the beginning, and not one for little kids – 12PG, perhaps, as long as you’re paying attention to which scary sights might await the little ones in the next room. It begins as a maze of red-upholstered corridors, like a scene from Twin Peaks, with tiny screens and surreal stills from films – undeniably creepy. Small rooms are like filmsets.
A TV from the 1950s shows footage of Ghandi’s assassination on a loop, while a modern widescreen underneath plays matching scenes from the 1982 film underneath. One room is a giant fridge. Another set of cinema seats are actually toilets. You step from a 1940s living room to the centre of a cube of mathematical formulae, and then into a film processing room that eerily conveys the idea of creating the people on screen, scarier than Frankensteins lab. The place is all atmosphere.
The central space houses red loungers on which you can take a break and watch a film, or the star of the building, the all-glass lift whirring up and down, casting shadows on the ornate ceiling, looking less real than the projected images all around.
There are other museums and tours. One celebrates Turin as a place of black and white magic, and takes tourists on a tour at dusk through the sinister and imaginary world of dark angels and avenging devils. Another runs underground, through the cellars of churches and palaces into air raid shelters, also featuring a gory range of unsolved murders and ghosts. There are always walking tours around the centre, but once you’ve got your bearings, all you really need is a good map and a comfortable pair of shoes.
The Parco del Valentino is all ice cream kiosks and playgrounds, and shady paths by the pea-green Po. You can rent kayaks, and take the slow route through the city, or go to a football match and support either Juventus or the more low-key Torino. Or just walk – there are palaces just around the corner to be discovered.
No tour can compete with the feeling of happening on the fabulous whiteness of Palazzo Madama, free to enter, all marble and light. If you get there at dusk the sky will be alive with swallows scissoring through the air, slicing the cool blue evening as they swoop in and out of the old city gates nearby. You can just stand and watch for a while, then step across the square for the best coffee you’ve had in years, or an inexpensive meal of fresh pasta with a glass of local wine.
It’s easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not special. Less flashy and brash than Milan, less touristy than Venice, Turin really is incredible.
Turin where to . . .
Stay
Value: Residence DuParc, Corso Massimo D'Azeglio, tel 00-39-0116508383 or residenceduparc.com. A little outside town, but good for families with young children who are staying a couple of days or more. It's an apartment-style hotel, with rather cheesy 1970s decor, but impeccably clean, lots of room, and a good family location beside the green expanse of Parco del Valentino.
Mid-market: Residence Sacchi, Via Sacchi, tel 00-39-0115563811 or residencesacchi.it. In the centre of Turin and near the railway station. It offers impeccably clean studio apartments with small kitchenettes, big bathrooms and free Wi-Fi. Ideal for single travellers who like to do their own thing.
Upmarket: Grand Hotel Sitea, Via Carlo Alberto, tel 00-39-011 5170171 or grandhotelsitea.net. Old-style five-star hotel with some classic decor, and a pleasant courtyard. Well located with nice breakfast buffet.
Eat
Value: Sfashion Café, Piazza Carlo Alberto, tell 00-39-011 5160085, book at info@sfashioncafe.com. A friendly place where locals queue down the street for a table in the evenings. However, if you come early, you can often get a lucky place sharing a long table outside by the square, and enjoy creamy gnocchi and fabulous salads. Nietzsche lived in the building once. Casual, despite its name, the food is fresh and excellent.
Mid-market: L'Acino Restaurant, Via San Domenico, tel 00-39-0115217077. This is small but almost perfect. A wide range of local dishes, lots of charm and a warm welcome make this worth calling ahead to book.
Upmarket: Baratti Milano, Piazza Castello, tel 00-39-011 4407138, barattiemilano.it. The ultimate in stylish coffee and desserts. Famous for its ice creams and chocolates for over 150 years, it's worth a visit for the decor and architecture alone. Try a giandujotto, a chocolate-hazelnut treat which is unique to Turin.
Shop
Cool Italian-designed homewares and interior design at Plus on Via Lagrange (see plusonline.it).
Hot spot
All the bars in the centre offer aperitivos from around 7pm. After dark, the old boat sheds along the river close to Ponte Vittorio Emanuele, locally called the Murazzi, are transformed into a lively nightclub strip.
Tip
Turin suffers from mosquitoes. So come in the cooler months or bring repellent for the evenings.
Get thereRyanair (ryanair.com) fly to Turin from Stansted every day, and run flights from Dublin during the skiing season. KLM (klm.com) has connections from Dublin via Amsterdam, and Air France (airfrance.com) and British Airways (britishairways.com) also have indirect flights.
If you have a spare day it can be cheaper and more fun to fly direct with Ryanair to Bergamo, and take the train, allowing you a stopover in Milan for lunch.